This Week, Next Week in Books: 28th June, 2015

Morning All. Here’s to another Sunday. I can never believe the weeks go quite as quickly as they do. This week has been especially busy as we are decorating ahead of a house move. If I never see a tin of gloss paint again, I’ll be a happy woman.  I did manage to get some reading in though, finishing both Without You by Saskia Sarginson and The Other Child by Lucy Atkins.  I’ve followed these up with The Boy Who Could See Death, a collection of short stories by Salley Vickers.

Eli is an ordinary boy with an extraordinary gift. It will shape the course of his whole life but, he learns the hard way, he must keep it hidden from those who know him best. Seeing death is a mixed blessing.

Eli is not the only one defying the world’s expectations of him. Cousin Francesca, a charming spinster and a favourite with the children, is harbouring kleptomaniac tendencies. Sarah Palliser, living alone next to a ramshackle graveyard, is more scared of the small box under her stairs than the ghosts outside her window. Meanwhile dreamy artist Nan is nursing a growing obsession with wolves in Britain and the recently widowed Frances finds herself inventing an exotic imaginary boyfriend to pass the time.

Push through an unassuming front door on an unremarkable street or peer into the glowing fluorescent windows of an urban office block and within you’ll find strange and unforgettable scenes, normal people caught in situations they do not quite comprehend…

I’ve also two more books for the pile.  Fallout by Sadie Jones arrived yesterday curtesy of a Mumsnet Book Club giveaway (I’m on a bit of a roll at the moment for giveaways and feeling rather lucky).

London 1972. Luke is dazzled by the city. It seems a world away from the provincial town he has fled along with his own troubled past, and his new life is unrecognisable – one of friendships forged in pubs, candlelit power cuts, and smoky late-night parties.

When Nina, a fragile and damaged actress, strays into his path, Luke is immediately drawn to her and the delicate balance of his new life is threatened. Unable to stay away from her, Luke is torn between loyalty, desire and his own painful past, until everything he values, even the promise of the future, is in danger…

I also got a review copy of Bradstreet Gate by Robin Kirman, which sounds rather good.

Georgia, Charlie and Alice each arrive at Harvard with hopeful visions of what the future will hold. But when, just before graduation, a classmate is found murdered on campus, they find themselves facing a cruel and unanticipated new reality. Moreover, a charismatic professor who has loomed large in their lives is suspected of the crime. Though his guilt or innocence remains uncertain, the unsettling questions raised by the case force the three friends to take a deeper look at their tangled relationship. Their bond has been defined by the secrets they’ve kept from one another—Charlie’s love and Alice’s envy, Georgia’s mysterious affair—and over the course of the next decade, as they grapple with the challenges of adulthood and witness the unraveling of a teacher’s once-charmed life, they must reckon with their own deceits and shortcomings, each desperately in search of answers and the chance to be forgiven.

And that’s it for me. What about you – what are you reading?

emma

This week, I’m linking in with Kimberly at the Caffeinated Book Reviewer and her Sunday Post. Head over to see what other bloggers have read, written about or just added to their shelves.